[arghwhat]

Quoting your linked paper:

> Vegetable proteins, when combined to provide for all of the essential amino acids, provide an excellent source for protein considering that they will likely result in a reduction in the intake of saturated fat and cholesterol.

> [..] When the more accurate PDCAAS scale is used, soy protein was reported to be equivalent to animal protein with a score of 1.0, the highest possible rating (Hasler, 2002).

> Soy is a complete protein with a high concentration of BCAA’s.

So not only does the paper say that soy protein is a "complete" protein like beef, it scores soy higher than beef in Table 1 (which only gets a score of 0.92!), and states that it has associated health benefits (several mentioned throughout the paper).

Whey also scores a 1.0 for the curious, suggesting we do not have to eat the cow to get its protein.

Furthermore, it should be noted that the paper studies protein uptake efficiency and coverage ("quality") in the context of elite athletes and their very high protein requirements that range from difficult to dangerous to maintain (the paper mentions concerns of cardiovascular issues and bone loss risk when using beef protein for example). These concerns do not apply to those without extreme dietary needs.

Even if you cannot eat soy, the concerns of coverage or quality of individual protein sources are largely irrelevant when combined with a varied diet that contains more than one source - arguably a requirement to discussing dietary health, and suggested by the paper as a solution.

So while the reference to the paper is good, it is important to read it - thoroughly - in its intended context.

[hansvm]

Complete protein or not, you can get your sulfur-containing amino acids 32oz of tofu or 6oz of turkey (less of both if you're smaller), and other vegan sources are significantly worse, so a properly varied diet has higher demands. It's not impossible, but it's not as easy as just replacing all your animal proteins with equivalent masses of plant proteins either.

[AmericanChopper]

You could revise your claim that vegetable proteins are just as good as animal sourced proteins, to the far more specific claim that soy proteins being as good as animal proteins if you like. Because soy is the only plant source that is comparable in quality to animal sourced proteins (which is why the majority of vegan protein supplements are soy-based).

Even then, if you were to get all or a majority of your protein requirements from soy, then that's a lot of soy. You'd have to eat 1-2 pounds or more of boiled soy beans per day. Which aside from being a very atypical diet, would also be above the level of isoflavone consumption that has been studied to be safe (incidentally, consuming large quantities of whey protein also has some unpleasant side-effects in most people, like extreme flatulence, constipation and the associated discomfort).

Implementing a highly restrictive diet, that eliminates entire food groups that you've evolved to rely on, is unsurprisingly complicated. It also unsurprisingly puts you at risk of deficiencies in the nutrients that your new diet is deficient in. Which is why vegans are unsurprisingly at an increased risk of negative health outcomes associated with those deficiencies.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00330...

Your claim that vegetable protein is just as good as animal protein is honestly just misinformation, as well as being dangerous health advice. You can eat a healthy vegan diet if you put the effort into planning it properly, which anybody following your erroneous advice would not be doing.

[arghwhat]

No, my claim that vegetable are a good source of high quality protein in general - and not just soy - is taken straight from your paper. You are cherry-picking data and ignoring the most basic dietary advice to support your pro-beef argument at this point. Not only that, you are adding completely bogus claims such as to the amount of food required from sources you find inferior: A steak contains roughly 25 grams of protein per 100 gram. Boiled soy contains 17 grams of protein, while dry roasted soy contains 40 grams of protein per 100 gram - almost double that of beef. Someone weighing 80kg would need eat 240 grams of steak, 352 grams of boiled soy, or just 150 grams of dry roasted soy! Not only are the numbers similar, but they are beat by soy yet again.

And yet again, basic dietary advice is that you should eat varied. Suggesting that you should cover your entire nutritional requirements from a single source - steak, soy or anything else - or in a single serving is objectively bad advice.

As a proud carnivore who has difficulty finding comfort in vegetarian diets, I find this sort of backwards justification for our environmental load highly disappointing. Eating meat is one thing - as a steak lover, I would be a hypocrite to fault you for that - but trying to make it sound like a necessity or a sensible choice is just... Wrong.